A Quick Guide to Numbers in Spanish

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Want to learn about Spanish numbers? 3 … 2 … 1 … let’s go! This article teaches you about cardinal numbers and ordinal numbers in Spanish.

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A Comprehensive Guide to Counting from 1 to 100PronunciationCardinal Numbers in SpanishHow to say your age in SpanishOrdinal Numbers in SpanishQuiz time!

This article is going to focus on numbers! Clearly, they’re an important part of any language, and are used every day, including for talking about dates, times, ages, prices … the list goes on!

Let’s get the formalities out of the way first: Spanish numbers are either cardinal numbers or ordinal numbers. Don’t worry, it’s simpler than it sounds!

Cardinal numbers are just, well, numbers. For example ‘one,’ ‘five,’ ‘200.’ Ordinal numbers are similar but used for saying the position of something, e.g. ‘first,’ ‘fifth,’ ‘200th.’

A Comprehensive Guide to Counting from 1 to 100

Pronunciation

• We’ve added a pronunciation guide, but hearing the numbers spoken by a native is also super important, to make sure you’re doing it more or less right!
• The apostrophe at the beginning of a syllable means that you put the emphasis on that syllable.
• Where we’ve given two options, the first one is generally the Latin American pronunciation, and the second is generally used more in Spain. This arises where the letter ‘c’ is, in some words, pronounced as ‘s’ in Latin America and ‘th’ (as in ‘thanks’) in Spain:

Cardinal Numbers in Spanish

So, to learn how to count, we need the cardinal numbers.

Clearly we’re not going to list every single number from 0 to 1,000 or 1,000,000 or beyond! Luckily, we have patterns that mean you only have to learn the small numbers (and the big multiples like ‘hundred’ and ‘thousand’) in order to be able to figure out how to say any number.

Let’s start with 0-20:

* The number one is uno. However, if you want to say that you have one of something, you use un for a masculine noun, and una for most feminine nouns! For example, ‘Tengo un hermano y una hermana.’ (‘I have one brother and one sister.’) Before a feminine singular noun beginning with stressed a- or ha-, una normally shortens to un, as in un águila.

** You may have heard of a celebration called the quinceañera that’s celebrated in parts of Latin America and parts of the US. It marks a girl’s 15th birthday, and, as you can see, comes from the word quince (‘15’) and the word año (‘year’)!

*** The words for 16, 17, 18, and 19 are pretty smart. They come from mashing together words. For example, 17 comes from blending together the words diez y siete (‘ten and seven’).

Okay, let’s move on to 21-30:

With the twenties, we carry on blending words together, e.g. veintidós (‘22’) comes from veinte y dos (twenty and two).

* We mentioned earlier that uno becomes un or una before a noun. It’s similar with 21, 31, and so on:

Tú tienes veintiún plátanos. Yo tengo veintiuna manzanas. (‘You have 21 bananas. I have 21 apples.’)

Now, let’s look at the 30s:

In the thirties, we still do a little bit of math, but we don’t need to worry about mashing words together now! For example, 35 is simply treinta y cinco (‘thirty and five’).

The same rule applies for the 40s, 50s, all the way up to and including the 90s!

Now you know that, you just need to get to 100 in multiples of 10, so let’s look at 10-100, to recap the earlier ones and advance up to higher numbers:

Exactly 100 is cien. Use ciento for numbers from 101 to 199, such as ciento dos.

For example,

When we’re using numbers from 101-199, we have to use ciento:

• 102ciento dos (syehn-toh dohs/thyehn-toh dohs)
• 132ciento treinta y dos (syehn-toh ’treyn-tah ee dohs/thyehn-toh ’treyn-tah ee dohs)
• 160ciento sesenta (syehn-toh se-’sehn-tah/thyehn-toh se-’sehn-tah)

Next, we’ll look at the hundreds, from 100-900.

Some of them are just counting hundreds, e.g. cuatrocientos is a joined-up version of cuatro cientos. How many hundreds? Four hundred. Others (500,700, and 900) are a tiny bit different because what would Spanish be without exceptions to the rules?!

Now for the big ’uns! Let’s look at 1,000-1,000,000,000!

* Number formatting varies by country and style guide. A decimal comma is common in Spanish, so English 5.5 is often written 5,5. Thousands may be grouped with spaces or periods; check the local convention.

How to say your age in Spanish

In English, we use the verb ‘to be’ when it comes to age. In Spanish, we use ‘to have.’

The word for ‘year(s)’ is año(s). That little squiggle on the ñ is super important. If you skip it, you’re talking about how many anuses you have. You have been warned.

Ordinal Numbers in Spanish

As we mentioned at the start, ordinal numbers are used for stating the position of something.

First of all (see what I did there?!) let’s look at 1st-20th:

* primero becomes primer before a masculine singular noun, and the same happens with tercero–>tercer.

Spanish ordinal adjectives agree with the noun in gender and number, so their endings can be -o, -a, -os, or -as.

Instead of writing out whole words, in English we often use the last letters with the figure. We do the same in Spanish, using a numeral, a period and a superscript ending: o for masculine or a for feminine. Before a masculine singular noun, primer and tercer are abbreviated 1.^er and 3.^er.

• 1^st1.^o
• 2^nd 2.^o
• 3^rd time3.^a vez
• 106^th cookie106.^a galleta

Now things get a bit simpler (you’re welcome). We’ll look at 21^st-100^th:

From this point you just put the two words together, e.g. 20^th (vigésimo) and 7^th (séptimo) –> 27^th (vigésimo séptimo)

Let’s go up in multiples of ten from 10^th-100^th:

* 31^st, 41^st, etc. all have the same two options as 21^st.

Now onto the really big ones (1,000^th-1,000,000,000^th):

• thousandthmilésimo (mee-’leh-see-moh)
• millionthmillonésimo (mee-yoh-’neh-see-moh)
• billionthmilmillonésimo (meel-mee-yoh-’neh-see-moh)

Quiz time!

Write out the following numbers in words (in Spanish!). Take your time with this one, and try to figure them out using the patterns we’ve shown you.

1. 14

Click to reveal the correct answer:

a. catorce

2. 152

Click to reveal the correct answer:

a. ciento cincuenta y dos

3. 800 female nurses

Click to reveal the correct answer:

a. ochocientas enfermeras

4. 1.003

Click to reveal the correct answer:

a. mil tres

5. 1994

Click to reveal the correct answer:

a. mil novecientos noventa y cuatro

6. 20.000

Click to reveal the correct answer:

a. veinte mil

7. 5th

Click to reveal the correct answer:

a. quinto/a

8. 20th

Click to reveal the correct answer:

a. vigésimo/a

9. 38th

Click to reveal the correct answer:

a. trigésimo/a octavo/a

10. (I can’t control myself. I just ate my) 102nd cookie!

Click to reveal the correct answer:

a. (No me puedo controlar. ¡Acabo de comer mi) centésima segunda galleta!

Amazing work!

If you’re new to Spanish numbers and made it through that quiz, then I really applaud your effort!

There are some numbers that you’ll use more frequently than others, but it’s good to know the patterns so when you see any number written down, you have the knowledge you need to figure out how to say it out loud! 2,935,096? No problem 😉